1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an account transaction and authorization system and more particularly to a method and computer program product requiring an account owner to authorize a pending transaction.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are many credit and debit card providers issuing particular types of transaction cards to their customers. Customers present these cards to merchants to charge goods and services, as well as for distribution of currency, to the cardholder's account. To authorize a transaction, a merchant will typically contact the issuer of the card for authorization to apply the cost of the transaction to the cardholder's account.
When a holder of a credit or debit transaction card presents the card to a merchant in order to purchase goods, services or distribution of currency, some form of authorization by the card issuer is typically sought by the merchant to minimize theft and risk of loss to the merchant. For this purpose, electronic authorization networks have been developed wherein a merchant uses a terminal to read account information encoded on a magnetic strip located on the back of the transaction card. The terminal then automatically calls or otherwise communicates with a central processor, connected to the network, that analyzes the authorization request. The call from the terminal is typically routed through a local financial institution or transaction card issuer.
The central processor, upon receipt of the call from the merchant, may initiate an electronic data link to the processor operated by the transaction card issuer to determine if the transaction should be approved or denied. The processor at the transaction card issuer may check the status of the account within its database and consider the status of the account in generating a response. This response is then routed back to the merchant's terminal, typically in the form of an approval code or denial code.
Debit and credit cards have been heralded as the start of a cashless society where people no longer will carry cash but instead, transact all their business with credit or debit cards, thereby lowering the risk of losing or being robbed of their cash. This trend has led to implementing methods to protect against transaction card fraud and to prevent the unauthorized use of transaction cards. For example, a transaction card holder is often required to provide a secret personal identification number (PIN) at the point of sale to ensure that the transaction card holder presenting the card to the merchant is an authorized user of the account, and not an imposter. While these systems may help minimize the fraudulent use of credit and debit cards, they have led to an increase in the incidence of thieves forcing a cardholder, under duress, to provide the PIN associated with a given card.
Therefore, there is a need for an account authorization system capable of deterring or detecting this type of crime. It would be an advantage if the system would immediately alert the authorities of the crime in progress. It would be desirable if this alert went undetected by the perpetrator of the crime.